Given the president’s attack on liberal democracy, with Kremlin interference his cult of personal power could spread across the Atlantic

The friendliest polling station I have visited was in Grozny, Chechnya. Separatist rebellion had been crushed by the Russian army, and a referendum was being held to confirm the republic’s loyalty to Moscow. Journalists were bussed in to witness democracy reborn amid the ruins of war. Officials were cheerful, as were our military minders. The Potemkin village atmosphere would have been festive but for an eerie lack of voters. Their shyness was not expressed in official results: 80% turnout; 96% in favour of a new pro-Kremlin constitution.

That episode, 14 years ago, was elementary ballot-rigging. The vote was in Russia’s backyard, overseen at gunpoint. Fiddling with elections in mature democracies thousands of miles away is harder. But no one with a critical eye on US politics doubts that Muscovite agencies stirred the pot in 2016, salting it with stolen emails, partisan Facebook ads and other meddlesome ingredients.

How serious are the allegations?

There is no one within reach of power in the UK who touches Trumpian levels of malevolent narcissism, racist demagoguery and gross cupidity